The Use of Experts in Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis: Towards a Confidence Approach

Epistemic uncertainties about future earthquakes are included in Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) using logic tree. Each model in the logic tree is assigned a weight based on the judgements provided by a panel of expert. In this paper we raise some methodological challenges to the use of experts in PSHA. We then present an alternative approach to include the scientist’s confidence in an estimate for a quantity of interest. The pro- posed methodology extends Brian Hill’s and Richard Bradley’s "confidence approach". We finally compare our approach with the standard (Bayesian) approach.